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Law and Oracle is an adaptation of PKD's short story "Minority Report" in which the Pre-Cog (short for pre-cognition) department polices based on glimpses of fu
by nickles 10y ago
Law and Oracle is an adaptation of PKD's short story "Minority Report" in which the Pre-Cog (short for pre-cognition) department polices based on glimpses of future crime. Orwell's "1984" explored the similar, but distinct, notion of 'thoughtcrime'. Both works examine the implications of such policing methods and are certainly worth reading.
- Jaruzel 10y agoOr, if you are time impaired, there is of course Minority Report the film, starring Tom Cruise. Not as in depth, of course, but not a bad adaptation imho.
- Pamar 10y agoTo be honest I read 1984 maybe six or seven times and I do not remeber "prediction" to be one of the main themes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime The oppressive regime of 1984 does not use math or computers to look for "suspects". We might argue this was because Orwell had no idea about these methods (book was written in 1948, after all) but personally I doubt he would have used this because advocating decisions to an impersonal algorithm would make the bad guys slightly less bad: in the novel the main baddie says something like "do you want to see the future of Human Race? Think of a boot stomping on a human face, forever...". I.e. power for them is a end in itself, and the only way to use it is to make someone else suffer. I don't see any place for "impersonal algorithms to better adjudicate anything" in this.